The present invention refers to data communication networks adapted to interconnect multiple data sources and data receivers.
The opportunistic exploitation of mobile users moving in a certain area and being equipped with wireless digital devices of high performance in terms of computing and memory, and able to collect, to process and to share environmental data collected via a large amount of low-cost sensors located in outdoor environments is currently of high interest in the research field of Situated Autonomic Communications. It has been recognized that such nomadic approach has the potentiality to pave the way to the induction of large-scale deployment of location/context aware applications and services for the benefit of both private and public users. Furthermore such communication paradigm solves the well known scalability and cost problem inherent with multi-hop routing-based architectures.
The European patent applications EP 05001930.6 and EP 05008909.3 of the present applicant aim at a novel approach able to address these challenges. Nature and society exhibit many instances of systems in which large populations are able to reach efficient equilibria and to develop effective collaboration and survival strategies, able to work in the absence of central control and to exploit local interactions. The present invention intends to provide a fully integrated network and service environment that scales to large amounts of heterogeneous devices, and that is able to adapt and evolve in an autonomic way.
The subjects of the European patents cited above overcome device heterogeneity and achieve scalability via an autonomic and localized peer-to-peer communication paradigm. They evolve to adapt to the surrounding environment, just like living organisms evolve by natural selection. Network operations are driven by the services, providing an ad hoc support when and where needed to fulfill user requests. Security issues are considered as a fundamental part of the services themselves, representing a key ingredient for achieving a purposeful autonomic system. The network becomes just an appendix of the services which, in turn, become a mirror image of the social networks of users they serve. This people-centric paradigm breaks the barrier between service providers and users, and sets up the opportunity for “mush-rooming” of spontaneous services, therefore paving the way to a service and user-centric Information and Community Technology revolution.
The present invention intends to resolve the problems due to the emerging trend towards pervasive computing and communication environments, i.e. the large number of networked embedded devices. Such device possesses sensing/identifying capabilities, making it possible for user-situated services to interface directly with the surrounding environment, entailing the possibility of introducing radically novel service, able to enhance the five senses, and the communication and tool manipulation capabilities of human beings.
The embedded devices must possess computing and (basic) communication capabilities, having the potential to form a massively larger networked system, orders of magnitude larger than the current internet. The complexity of such environments will not be far from that of biological organisms, ecosystems and socio-economic communities.
Traditional communication approaches are ineffective in the context, since they fail to address several new features: a wide heterogeneity in node capabilities and service requirements, a huge number of nodes with consequent scalability issues, the possibly high node mobility and the management complexity.
The network architecture according to the present invention resolves the problems cited above and provides a structure which is based on a trade-off between the known state of the art concerning multihop routing and the content of the earlier EP applications cited above of the present applicant, called here-after nomadic approach.
According to the invention, the network architecture for data communication between data sources and data destinations via network nodes and at least one data concentrator is characterized in that the nodes are conceived to communicate with a data concentrator in both directions either via a permanently operative network in the multihop mode or via an occasionally operative network in wireless connection with mobile user nodes in the nomadic mode, and that means for commutation are provided to detect faulty multihop nodes and to activate nomadic nodes instead until the fault disappears, in order to maintain the overall functionality of the network.
For details and variants of the networks according to the invention reference is made to the dependent claims.